


A Moment to Break

by TheBatchild



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Project TAHITI, commisison, pre-avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4082971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBatchild/pseuds/TheBatchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Phil Coulson has been facing a lot of pressure and it's only when he feels safe that he can break down and let it out. Agent Parker MacNamara is his safety.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment to Break

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lavender_Persimmon305](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavender_Persimmon305/gifts).



The Joint Dark Energy Mission, or JDEM as it was more commonly referred to by those who knew of its existence, wasn’t usually a place Parker MacNamara would call thriving. Sure, there were lots of people around all the time, and it was never quiet,but they weren’t usually in the same place at the same time. The SHIELD and NASA staffs tended to keep to their own areas of the base, only interacting with each other when it was called for. Except for the science divisions, of course. No one could keep them apart. Currently, the entire staff of the base—both SHIELD and NASA—was crammed into the mess hall, groups of people clustered at and around tables, standing off the side, nosing around tables laden with food and drink… There were people positively everywhere. The press of life and noise was almost too much when one was used to far quieter halls.   

Parker sniffed as she pressed into the cold room, trying not to bump into anyone. It didn’t take her long to locate Agent Phil Coulson, poised as he was near the front of the room. She wedged herself into the corner next to him, returning the grin he gave her in greeting. 

“You’re late Agent MacNamara,” he scolded, dropping his chin and affecting one of Director Fury’s favoured expressions; Parker often wondered if Phil was aware of his tendency to imitate their boss.  

She obliged him with a sheepish grin. “Sorry Agent Coulson. Traffic on the way in from the airport this evening was murder.” 

The grin was back. “How was New York? And how was your grandmother?” 

“Oh much the same as the last time—even busier maybe, if such a thing is possible. Just planted a new addition to her garden. She’ll outlive us all,” she added with a fond smile. “And New York was, well, New York. Loud, busy, and kind of smelly.” Parker’s smile turned to more of a grin, and a slight mischievous one at that. “Quinn is doing just fine—which is what I’m assuming you were really curious about—though she made me promise to ask you to stop calling.” 

Phil gave her an indignant look, as if the last thing he would currently inquire after was the wellbeing of his protégé, and fished his phone out of one of the interior pockets of his suit jacket. He poked at the screen for a moment before he found what he was looking for. When he turned the screen towards his partner, it displayed a selfie-style picture of the aforementioned Quinn seated in front of the defrosting body of Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, who just happened to be Phil’s greatest hero. The picture wouldn’t have been the source of any contention—beyond jealously that Quinn got to monitor the frozen national hero and Phil didn’t—except that Quinn was posing with a smug grin and had sent the photo with the text: “Cap wanted to say hi but he fell asleep.” The rather snide texts had started as retaliation for Agent Coulson’s continuous calls and texts asking after Rogers’ health. The discovery of Captain America’s body in the ice was something Phil had been hoping for pretty much since joining SHIELD, and it killed him not to be involved in his care. 

Parker had to stifle her laugh, which resulted in a sort of snort. She might have blushed, but her and Phil were far too close for her to be embarrassed but something so small. “Oh Phil,” she said, the laughter still in her voice, “I would love to offer sympathy, but I think you’ve brought this on yourself.” 

Phil sighed, resigned, and returned his phone to his pocket. “You may be right.” 

One of Parker’s hands had come to rest on Phil’s forearm during the exchange, a casual touch that was suited to their personal relationship, but not the professional. She withdrew it with a faint blush and crossed her arms over her chest. As they’d become closer, more entangled, it had become harder and harder to keep the line separating the personal and professional visible, but that line was something they’d both agreed was necessary. To switch the conversation, to distract from the slip, Parker gestured at the crowds around them; she noticed some of the people seemed to have filed out at some point. 

“So what did I miss?” 

“Just an update about what’s been going on in the various areas of the facility, an announcement of an impending visit from Director Fury—the usual stuff. Fury’s probably bringing a list of changes to be made to Phase 2, but we won’t know until he shows up, and Quinn’s been mum about that subject as well.” Phil looked around the mess hall and then back to Parker, his shoulders rising and falling with a little shrug. “So, nothing important.” 

“Good,” she said, relieved. “I was afraid I’d missed the employee of the month announcement.” 

Phil narrowed his eyes playfully at Parker, and then headed for the exit, his redheaded partner falling in beside him. They headed through the halls in silence, passing scientists and engineers and mechanics heading back to work, until they reached the offices Phil and Parker had claimed as their own. Phil’s was the larger office, as befitted his rank as the overseer of Project PEGASUS and all Tesseract-related things, and slightly farther down the hall. Parker strode right past her door though, and followed Phil into his office. 

The door shut behind them and Parker wrapped her arms around Phil’s neck, an embrace he gratefully returned. It had been almost two weeks since they’d seen each other, and Parker was mildly steamed about having to work instead of spending the day celebrating her reunion with Phil, locked away in a room somewhere. 

With champagne. 

And strawberries. 

Phil stole a quick kiss as they extracted themselves from the embrace. “I missed you, Parks.” 

She smiled and took a kiss of her own. “Missed you too.” 

Phil brushed his lips across Parker’s forehead, one hand rising to cup the back of her head beneath the quick ponytail she’d thrown her hair into on her way from the airport. She could feel the restrain in his touch, and knew he was thinking about kissing her as he should kiss her, but also knowing they didn’t have the time for such things. “I wish we could take some time off from this,” he whispered against her skin, almost as if he was afraid Fury or another of the higher ups would overhear. 

With a pang of guilt over her recent visit with her grandmother—it had been a stopover on a business trip, so not a true vacation, but still—Parker pulled back from him to study his face. Phil loved his job, loved being a SHIELD agent, and it wasn’t often he wished for time off. The only time she remembered him taking any leave was after Quinn had had her accident in Puente Antiguo. He hadn’t even taken any time when he’d broken his arm. He’d just insisted they give him a desk job until it healed and he could return to the field. Something was up. The lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth were deeper, and there was a slightly hollow quality about him. 

She hadn’t been gone for that long. What could have happened to make him look so lost? 

“Phil…” she breathed, reaching toward his face. “What’s wrong?” 

He sunk into her touch as his fingertips moved across his cheek, but then he seemed to think better of it and stepped away, turning toward his desk and sinking rather heavily into his chair. All the romance and tension of their reunion had left the room. “It’s nothing, Parker. I’m just not sleeping very well.” 

“You’re not looking at me Phil—you’re lying.” 

The Phil who looked up at Parker wasn’t the kind-faced man she was beginning to love. No, the Phil who looked up at her then was hard and unrelenting. It was a look that meant he was done talking. It was a look Phil used to help assert his authority, and it was one he often employed in interrogations. Parker had seen it many times, but never had it been levered against her. Parker took an involuntary half-step back. 

“Fine,” she snapped, her hackles up because of Phil but also because of her reaction. She did not show weakness. She was no weak. “If you don’t want to tell me, then don’t, but don’t lie to me.” 

Before Phil could answer however, she turned smartly on her heel and marched to her office. Behind her, Phil sighed and sank into his chair. But he didn’t follow her.   

* * *

The wails started around midnight. 

Parker was still holed up in her office, when normally she would have moved to her quarters, attending to the personnel reviews she’d fallen behind on. The only light came from her desk lamp and computer screen, and the only sounds were the periodic scratching of pen on paper, clicks of fingers on the keyboard, and the soft strains of music wafting from her computer speakers. When the first wail broke through her solitude, Parker jumped, her heart hammering in her ears, breath catching in her chest. She looked around, panicked, and thought to herself, 

_I’ve put myself in quite a horror movie-esque setting, now haven’t I?_

She shook of the bizarre thought as she got to her feet, her SHIELD agent training kicking in after the initial shock. In a few smooth moves, she rose to her feet, retrieved her sidearm from where it hung, still in her holster, from the back of her chair, and started through the room, ears perked for the sound, or any indication of where it had come from. 

And though she was expecting it, Parker still jumped when another wail pierced the air. 

Pierced might have been a stretch. The noise wasn’t that loud, but it was abrupt and odd enough to still be shocking. 

“What in the world is that?” she muttered, head tilted as she tried to pinpoint the direction of the anguished cries. 

The noises were definitely human—Parker thought she might have been able to make out the words “please,” “die,” and “pain” amidst the sobs and moans—but there was no reason she could think of for there to be such noises inside the JDEM facility. Unless… yes, this wail sounded the same as the previous one. Was it a recording she was hearing? If so, why was something watching something so awful? Parker tried hard to not think about the people making those noises or what was causing them such pain and kept on the trail, gun still poised at the ready. Though if it was a recording, she wouldn’t need it; she felt safer having it out regardless.   

Parker had moved into the hall, the wails getting a little louder with every step. Her palms were itching. As she passed the door to Phil’s office another, different cry went up and Parker stopped breathing. Something cold worked its way into her chest. 

The noises were coming from Phil’s office. 

Her shoulders loosened slightly as she rose up from her battle-ready crouch, the hand holding her gun falling to her side, finger still near the trigger. She stood there, staring at the door, her mouth open and eyes wide. 

Why was Phil watching a video of people screaming? 

It had to be connected to whatever was bothering him, to whatever was giving him that hollow look, whatever was driving him to want time off from the job he loved. 

Parker only debated for a few moments if she should enter the office or not. Phil obviously didn’t want to talk about whatever was going on, but she wasn’t just going to let her partner, her boyfriend, agonize over whatever was eating at him alone. So, she tucked her gun into the waistband of her skirt at the small of her back, set her shoulders, and opened the door without knocking. 

At first, Phil didn’t notice. He was sitting at his desk in the far corner of the room, hunched over and staring at his computer screen. His haunted face was lit only by the bluish glow from his monitor and such lighting only made him look worse. He was so engaged by whatever he was watching that he didn’t notice Parker until she was standing in front of his desk, her arms crossed loosely over her chest and what she hoped was a blank look on her face. She cleared her throat and he looked up, too startled to even try to hide what he was watching. 

And what he was watching… Well, Parker didn’t get a long look before Phil finally did shut the screen off, but the monitor was on an angle, so she did see something. She saw a small concrete room with one light hanging from the centre of the ceiling. She saw the back of Phil’s head, a muscled SHIELD agent standing near the door, and a small woman sitting across a table from Phil, head thrown back as she cried. 

“What’s going on Phil?” Parker asked, voice low and serious. 

Phil turned on his desk lamp and sat back in his chair, running his hands over his face. “I can’t talk about it—” 

“Don’t give me any lines about it be classified. I don’t care if it’s above my security clearance, Phil.” Parker leaned forward, hands braced on the desk, and put her face as close to Phil’s as she could manage. “I care that whatever it is, is making you lose sleep and is taking away the joy you have for your work.” 

“Parker—” 

“What. Is. Going. On.” 

For a few long heartbeats, Phil did nothing. He sat there in his chair and stared at her, his thoughts warring across his face, in his eyes, as he tried to figure out what to do. Several times, he opened his mouth as if to begin speaking, but then closed it again and sunk back into his thoughts. She knew there was a lot to think about. If it was above her security clearance, or if it was off the books, Fury would not be happy about Phil telling her, but more than likely, the director wouldn’t take any adverse action. Parker could keep secrets. Her career was in keeping secrets. But Phil didn’t like going against Fury in anything. However, Phil might not be telling her for some other reason. Maybe he was working on the orders from Pierce, or the World Security Council. Maybe he was doing something he shouldn’t be. Telling her could get one or both of them fired, and could jeopardize the lives of any number of people. 

“It’s called Project TAHITI,” Phil finally said. His voice was quiet, strained, but it drew Parker from her worry nonetheless. 

Parker dropped onto the edge of one of the small chairs facing Phil’s desk. “What is SHIELD doing to people to make them make those hideous noises?” she asked, aghast. 

Phil’s mouth twisted into a grimace. He didn’t want to tell her, but she wasn’t letting him off the hook now, and Phil knew it. He sighed. “Parker…” 

“Phil.” 

He sighed again. “Project TAHITI was started at the same time as the Avenger Initiative. Its purpose is to develop a way to revive a fallen Avenger.” 

“Okay.” 

“With alien DNA.” 

Parker’s eyes bugged out and her stomach lurched. She’d heard rumours about SHIELD having alien technology since she’d joined, but finding out they had an actual alien was something else entirely. “Excuse me?” 

“You’ve read the reports of Agent Carter’s raid on a HYDRA base? Well,” he continued when Parker nodded; the reports were pretty much required reading at the Academy, “one of the crates she and the Howling Commandos recovered contained the corpse of an alien. There wasn’t a great deal of information about where Hydra found it, or what they’d done to it, and we didn’t do anything with it for a long time either. It wasn’t until The Avengers Initiative actually became a possibility that we realized we might be able to use it to help someone not human, or someone injured beyond the scope of human medicine.” 

Parker felt a little cold inside. She sat back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, trying to appear nonchalant about the world-shaking information. “And the screaming?” 

“Test subjects. Six of them. All SHIELD agents with terminal illnesses. All volunteers.” 

“That doesn’t explain—” 

Phil held up a hand, cutting off the anger he could hear building in Parker’s voice. She crossed her arms again, and if the situation had been different, Phil might have said she was pouting. “We’ve been extracting blood from the alien and developing serums from it. Nothing worked for a long time, but we finally found one that looked promising and injected the volunteers with it. At first…” Phil gave another sigh, much shakier this time, and Parker heard the first edge of sadness in his voice. “At first, nothing seemed amiss. There weren’t any negative reactions to the treatments, and in some cases, they seemed to be getting better, then they were all getting better. But then…” 

Phil leaned forward and turned the monitor back on. He pressed a key on the keyboard and the video resumed, the small woman screaming as she tried to relay her thoughts, her pain, to Phil. 

“They went insane.” 

And then, for the first time since Parker had known Phil, she saw him cry. 

She didn’t know if he’d been crying before as he reviewed the footage, or if it was her presence now that brought the emotion to the surface, but it didn’t matter. 

There was anger and revulsion taking root inside Parker. How could SHIELD run tests on humans? How could they put these people through such torture, even if they were terminally ill, even if they had volunteered? How could Fury think that was okay? How could Phil let that happen? Parker knew there would be reasoning beyond the stated purpose of Project TAHITI, and she knew it would probably make sense once she had heard it. She also knew that the agents really would have volunteered, and they would have known what they were signing up for. SHIELD wouldn’t have done anything so adverse to their own agents without their knowledge, she had to believe that. 

But none of that mattered now, either. 

Not when Agent Phillip Coulson was crying. 

Parker got to her feet and walked around the desk to stand in front of Phil. She turned the monitor off. He looked up at her, that hollow quality replaced with all the pain and confusion he must have been holding back while she was away. Swallowing the anger threatening to burst out, Parker settled herself in Coulson’s lap and wrapped her arms around him, cradling his head to her chest. His arms went around her and he held tight, fingers digging in, holding on for dear life, like Parker was his anchor. 

“I’ve been heading this project for a long time, Parker. Three years.” He sobbed, and the sound was so awful. Phil didn’t sob. Parker tightened her grip. Kissed his head, pulled them as close together as she could. “Three years and I’ve given these people hope. I’ve watched their diseases vanish, watched them turn joyful, and then watched them—watched them lose themselves, watched them go insane.” One of Coulson’s hands balled around the fabric of her blouse and his face turned into her. Parker stroked his hair and pressed her lips to his head again, resisting the urge to hush him. She was still mad. “And now…” 

“Now?” Parker urged when he was silent for too long. 

“Now Dr. Goodman wants to wipe their memories.” Phil inhaled and pulled back from Parker so he could look her in the eye. 

Parker watched him pull himself together in front of her eyes. He inhaled a deep breath, his shoulders straightening and chest puffing out ever so slightly. He’d stopped crying, though his breath was still hitching on the exhale. The eyes that met Parker’s were Phil’s eyes: expressive and warm even when he was feeling anything but. Parker raised one hand to his cheek, fingertips playing along his temple. 

“Won’t it be a good thing if they don’t remember the pain?” Parker asked, failing to keep all the anger from her voice. 

Phil flinched, his eyes falling away. “I don’t know, Parker. I don’t know—“ 

She felt him growing restless and got to her feet, climbing smoothly out of Phil’s lap. He got to his feet and they stood there, in the small pool of gold light from the lamp, staring at each other. Parker wanted to hug him again, to wipe the lingering confusion and tears from his face, but she also wanted to scream. The second urge won out. 

“What do you mean you don’t know?” she snapped. “You put them through this! You put them through the hope and the joy and the pain—and I know you feel bad about it and I know you are in pain over it, but you have to finish this. One way or the other, you have to finish what you started. You have to decide if Dr. Goodman’s idea is what you’re going to go with, or you have to find another way.” Parker knew her eyes were flashing and that she was very near to screaming, so she swallowed it down; it wouldn’t do to have someone else come running, to have someone else come upon their conversation. “These people deserve to find peace after what they’ve been through, especially,” she said, pointing at the monitor, “if that is any indication.” 

Some of the colour drained from Phil’s face. “What if the Memory Overwriting Machine doesn’t work?” 

“Then you find some other way.” Parker could feel her cheeks flushing. “These people deserve peace. If your magical alien serum has indeed gotten rid of their diseases, then they should be able to live out the rest of their lives in peace, without the memory of whatever torture they went through.” 

“I can’t—” 

“You have to, Phil. There is no one else.” 

He crossed his arms, face falling inward. Parker noticed his suit was a little wrinkled. She could feel the further protests on his lips. 

“Phil.” She moved closer to him, pushing all the negative emotions coursing through her farther away. Phil needed her and he’d always been there for her, from the day she’d joined SHIELD. “Phil.” She took his hands in hers. “You have been overseeing this project since it started. You know these patients, you know their cases, and you know the personnel involved. You have to make the final decision about these patients and you should make the final decision about Project TAHITI.”

Her partner sighed, squeezed Parker’s hands. “What do you think I should do?” 

“I think you should recommend an end to this project.” 

“But—” 

“Phil.” Parker’s voice was rising in volume again, her words coming out slightly strained. “I know you want the Avengers Initiative to succeed, and you want to have this contingency in place, but if it is eating at you this much, it isn’t worth it. Nothing is worth sacrificing your humanity over. You need to put an end to it.” 

Phil drew Parker to him, put his forehead to hers. “You’re mad, aren’t you?” 

“I am furious, Phil. This is so…” She huffed quietly, but leaned into Phil. “I don’t even know what this is. I can’t believe you’d be involved in something like this.” She grabbed his face when he started to pull back and held him still. “But I know why you did, and I know you and the Director wouldn’t have entered this lightly, but I can’t believe it’s gone on for so long.” 

He sagged against Parker suddenly and she took him in her arms. 

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for you, and I’ll be here for you from beginning to end, but you need to end this.” 

“I know.” 

He raised his head and wrapped his arms around Parker. His lips were light on hers. “How did I get by without you?” he asked. 

She beamed at him from less than three inches away and kissed him again. “I have no earthly idea.” Parker returned the embrace, and when she and Phil kissed again, it was easy to forget that she was mad, to forget the screams. It was easy to get lost in the feel of his lips on hers and the warmth of his arms. There would be hell to pay later, for Phil, and probably for Parker as well, but right then, it didn't matter.


End file.
